Dr. John Elliff shares stories of "Sterling Heroes of World War II"

Book release event to be held at July 4 Heritage Festival

Dr. John Elliff holds up a copy of his new book, "Sterling Heroes of World War II." Elliff and annotator and editor Denny Dressman will be at Overland Trail Museum's Heritage Festival, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, July 4, to debut the book. (Callie Jones/Journal-Advocate)

STERLING -- The Indomitable POW, The Flying Ace, The 4 a.m. Messenger, The Code-Breaker and The "Lucky Guy." Those are just a few of the real-life people you can read about in Dr. John Elliff's new book, "Sterling Heroes of World War II," set to be released at Overland Trail Museum's Heritage Festival on Wednesday, July 4.

Elliff will be at the museum from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with copies of his book.

"Sterling Heroes" tells the story of 36 veterans from northeastern Colorado, most from Sterling. Many of them Elliff met during his years practicing ophthalmology in Sterling.

"The way I usually found them is somebody would say, 'Well, you've got to get Joe to tell you his story,'" he said.

Starting in 2000, over a period of 10 years, Elliff sat down with the veterans for video-recorded interviews, asking them to recall their widely varying experiences immediately before, throughout and after World War II.

"A light bulb went on and I said 'I need to transcribe these,'" he said.

Elliff got one of his secretaries, Lila Moore, to transcribe the recordings, then he took it to a graphics guy, Scott Johnson. At that point he had 850 pages of transcript, so he turned to veteran journalist Denny Dressman, who will also be at the Heritage Festival, to help him annotate and edit the book, which is now a little over 500 pages long.

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The "Sterling Heroes" served in the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

"They served everywhere," Elliff said. "The Pacific, the European theater, Africa."

He says the book is simply "about guys telling their stories" -- stories of landing on Omaha Beach, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and taking part in the bloody invasion of Okinawa.

Some became prisoners of war and one survived the Pearl Harbor attack aboard the battleship Tennessee.

One was a code-breaker, another was in the first unit to liberate the Dachau concentration camp and one even transmitted half of President Theodore Roosevelt's last message to Japanese Emperor Hirohito just before the Pearl Harbor attack. Another came to America as an Italian soldier captured in North Africa, later becoming a U.S. citizen and 65-year resident.

What's unique about the book, Elliff said, is that unlike a lot of history books that are told in third person, "Sterling Heroes" is told in first person.

Elliff is a veteran himself, having been drafted into the Navy during the Korean War. He was a reserve and didn't see much action, unlike those in the book.

"Every one of them saw some strenuous action and dangerous action," Elliff said.

He points out that Logan County had several thousand men that fought in World War II; this is just a small portion of them.

Getting the veterans to open up could sometimes be difficult. There were a few who just didn't want to talk about it; they'd put the experience behind them. Of those who did talk to him, he said most were understandably "emotional" at some point in the interview.

Elliff pointed out that times were different back then.

"A lot of 17, 18, 19 year olds wanted to get into the Army and the Navy and they did; they were right in the middle of (the war)," he said.

Elliff recalled the gasoline, tire, sugar, food and shoe rationing.

"Everything was rationed," he said. "Everyone was on board about the war effort. There was 100 percent all-out effort on the part of the American people and these guys were a part of it, as were a lot of others from all over."

The book tells about the stress these men endured and the "position of the person actually engaged in those sorts of thing."

"I hope people reading this book get a feeling of what these guys were doing for them," Elliff said.

For those who can't make it to the Heritage Festival to get a copy of the book, copies can be ordered online at ComServBooks.com.

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